Wheeler HS graduate creates petition to keep school name

Wheeler grad video — *Once a nearly all-white school, Wheeler has one of the most diverse student bodies in the Cobb County School District, as exemplified by its Class of 2020.*

After an online petition was started this summer to change the name of Wheeler High School, a graduate of the East Cobb school has started one of her own to keep the name as it is.

Connie Behensky, who attended Wheeler with her four siblings, recently started what she calls “Don’t let them take the name away of our beloved high school,” and it has generated more than 200 signatures.

“We have great memories of our friends and teachers and just the best years of my personal life. You have let them remove our statues you are not going to take this away from us,” she wrote in her introduction.”

Behensky’s effort comes two months after a group calling itself “Wildcats for Change” started a petition demanding that the Cobb County School District rename Wheeler.

The school on Holt Road is named after Joseph Wheeler, a former Confederate general who was readmitted to the U.S. Army after the Civil War and served in Congress. He is one of the few Confederate officers buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Wildcats for Change petition has more than 4,500 signatures, including that of Cobb Board of Education member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters.

The group also has started a private Facebook group.

Those seeking to keep the Wheeler name discussed their memories on the new petition, including Mark M., who said he was part of the school’s first graduating class in 1967:

“Changing the name of the school will do nothing to change history. Leave it alone.”

Cathy M., a 1977 graduate:

“I am from the South. My parents are from the South. This is our heritage, Southern Heritage. Those who are demanding that anything southern (names, statues, locations, etc.) be changed and destroyed are bigots. Instead of standing strong against those that want to destroy the South, the politicians, stores, companies, professional sports organizations, manufactures and many more cave and bow down to these lunatics.”

Todd H.:

“The school was never about a singular person, of whom I never knew existed. It was about the memory of all the people who I went to school with. Don’t sully the memory.”

Leslie G., who graduated in 1969:

“Don’t punish us for what our ancestors did. People we never knew and whose views we don’t share. It was just Wheeler, my alma mater. I never even knew who he was until this ridiculous idea came up a few months ago. Please don’t invalidate the youth of so many of us.”

During a Cobb school board meeting Thursday, Davis said she had received correspondence from a descendant of Joseph Wheeler “who wanted me to know he had turned his life around.”

Her comments came during a discussion about creating a committee to examine school naming and renaming policies.

Board member David Morgan made the proposal after he noticed that there are no schools in the 112-school Cobb district that are named after minorities.

Morgan didn’t refer to Wheeler, or to a similar petition begun to change the name of Walton High School, but said he wanted to craft a policy to reflect the diversity of the Cobb school district.

According to the district’s own data, Cobb’s overall student body of nearly 112,000 students is 37 percent white, 30 percent black, 22 percent Hispanic and six percent Asian.

Wheeler was for many years a nearly all-white school, but is now one of the most diverse in the Cobb school district. Georgia Department of Education figures from March showed that Wheeler had 811 black students out of a total enrollment of 2,159.

Among the notable alumni of Wheeler is Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton, who is African-American and graduated in 1984.

The school board voted 4-3 to create a 10-member naming/renaming committee, and Davis said she wanted to serve. The panel will have three school board members, and each person on the seven-member school board will appoint a citizen from their posts.

Board member David Chastain, a Wheeler graduate who represents the Kell and Sprayberry clusters, voted against, saying he liked Morgan’s suggestion of a possible policy change but said “I don’t think we need to form a committee. . . . We do need to make this part of our consciousness as we move forward.”